The Mail 14 YEAR-OLDS

Patrick J. Ryan's criticism of John G. Short's reporting of the Weathermen in Chicago (letter, November 19) is falsely directed. What Short wrote was clearly not the product of his "fantasy-ridden" mind, but was out there in a real-life world that Ryan probably doesn't believe is there. Short's reference to "machine-gunning the head-master." on which Ryan rests his oedipal case, is merely an allusion to the movie "If ..." and the anarchy that movie arouses in natural-born men.

Finally, to all you analysands and dark-eyed strangers, there are too few 14 year-olds at Harvard.